California Guitar Trio’s own Bert Lams will pair up with Chapman Stick extraordinaire, Tom Griesgraber for an evening concert at the ‘Barn’ in Rochester Hills. The Barn is an intimate house concert setting where you will experience two world class musicians up close. We encourage buying tickets early since there is limited seating at the 'Barn'

Developed by musician Emmett Chapman in the early 70s, The Chapman Stick used by Griesgraber combines six guitar strings tuned in fourths with six bass strings tuned in fifths. Notes are “tapped” rather than strummed allowing the player to create separate parts in each hand with a variety of guitar and bass-like sounds. An unusual instrument at first glance and still unknown to most of the world, this 12-string guitar/bass/synthesizer hybrid capable of sounding like all three instrument families at once. Until you’ve seen it performed live, the music of Chapman Stick player Tom Griesgraber sounds too big to be real. There are acoustic guitar or piano-like moments, funk rock bass lines, ambient synth and soundscape textures, rock guitar leads, jazz solos and even small bits of percussion sometimes all happening simultaneously. To the uninitiated listener it sounds like an ensemble, but to those who have seen him live, it is the magic of a unique virtuoso.

Bert Lams

Bert Lams has twenty years of experience in performing and teaching classical guitar and guitar technique. He studied classical guitar with Monique Vigneron and Albert Sundermann (A. Sundermann was a student of Andres Segovia.) at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Brussels, Belgium where he graduated with honors. He has also conducted workshops for guitar students around the world, including master classes in Berlin, Paris, Buenos Aires, Santiago de Chile, Los Angeles, Tokyo and Mexico City.

Since 1990, Bert Lams has been a composer and performer with the highly acclaimed California Guitar Trio. In 1993, the California Guitar Trio released their first recording Yamanashi Blues on Discipline Records followed by a successful world tour. In the same year Lams completed a world tour with the Robert Fripp String Quintet resulting in the recording, The Bridge Between, on Discipline Records.

Tom Griesgraber

Griesgraber is one of the world’s most respected and active performers on The Stick. He has toured as an opening act and guest for more than eighty US shows with the California Guitar Trio, toured the US and Europe with drummer Jerry Marotta as the duo Marotta/Griesgraber and opened numerous shows for artists like The Tony Levin Band, The League of Crafty Guitarists, The Dixie Dregs, Steve Hackett, Adrian Belew, Al Dimeola, Stanley Jordan, Bill Bruford’s Earthworks, Larry Carlton and Steve Lukather, Muriel Anderson, Tower of Power, Asia, Michael Manring, Tim Reynolds, Jazz Mandolin Project and The Bad Plus. At the request of Recording Academy (Grammy’s) president Neil Portnow, he has also performed for the Academy’s Board of Trustees as well as the Academy’s Holiday Party and the 2004 Grammy Awards Show Post Party